Slices of Light

Sparky the Clown--wearing green overalls, red wig and apple-like nose--rides his bicycle down the street, blowing a whistle to wake up the children.

In Pied Piper fashion, he leads a string of young kids to a colorful tent on the front lawn of the Fashion Gardens Apartments in an impoverished neighborhood in central Anaheim.

He is calling them to a circus for Jesus.

“This is a different kind of waking up,” says Robert Moran, known as Sparky to the children.

Across town at the El Dorado Inn apartments--notorious for violence, drugs and prostitution--there is a circus atmosphere too. Here, an energetic woman in a red T-shirt--a 12-year-old dressed as a clown at her side--has the attention of about 70 children sitting on blue mats in front of her.

Pink, yellow and green helium balloons are anchored at the sides of the striped tent, from where Julie Ortega announces that she’ll lead the children in a prayer.

Ortega and Moran are members of the Anaheim-based nondenominational On Fire Ministries that once a week sets up at half a dozen apartment sites in depressed areas of Orange County to deliver a message of hope.

And loaves of bread.

“Dear God,” Ortega says, her head bowed, her eyes shut, “make us have good thoughts so that we can do good things.” Some of the children clasp their hands together like steeples. Others hold hands. A few older children on the fringes, riding bikes or cracking jokes, try to distract the children. They fail.

Shortly after the “amen” that marks the end to the morning’s service, Christian march music pours through the loudspeakers. It’s a cue for the children to line up for fruit punch and bread; lots of bread.

One little girl with a red-punch mustache tentatively takes one loaf, then another after a church member encourages her. She whispers “Thank you.” Most of the kids take at least two loaves.

Parents, many of whom stood by during the hourlong service, also pick up free bread.

Last year, On Fire Ministries gave away over half a million pounds of food and clothing, according to Armida Rodriguez, 39, copastor of the ministry with her husband, Eddie, 46.

“Many times we have children come up to us to tell us they don’t have food,” Armida Rodriguez said.

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Offering food for hungry stomachs as well as food for thought goes to the heart of this ministry. Launched nearly a year ago, the weekly program directed at children has until recently been held on Saturday mornings. Now, with longer daylight hours, it’s held on Tuesday evenings. No matter which day it’s held, though, it’s known in the ministry as Sparks Sidewalk Sunday. On the street, it’s simply Sparks.

The weekly attendance at each site is anywhere from 40 to 150 children.

“We can’t get them to Sunday school, so we bring Sunday school to them,” says Armida Rodriguez.

The programs are aimed at children, and the lessons are basic. After playing games, singing and clowning around, Ortega tells her Saturday morning audience about how bad apples can spoil good apples.

“The same thing happens with our thoughts,” Ortega tells the children, showing them a bucket full of apples. “We don’t want our bad thoughts to ruin our good thoughts.”

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Sparks Sidewalk Sunday is one of many “sparks” in On Fire Ministries. Founded by the Rodriguezes in October 1987, the ministry became affiliated with the Oakland-based Foursquare Gospel Church two years ago.

The ministry began with mobile theatrical plays that went into impoverished neighborhoods. “We’d go out and tell people we could help them,” Rodriguez says, “They’d tell us, ‘We need help, so help us.’ ”

That’s how the first of the church’s eight men’s drug rehabilitation homes throughout Southern California became a reality.

“Our hope is to spark a flame that could speak through the community, in our children before they find themselves caught up in an endless cycle of drugs, violent gangs and family abuse,” Rodriguez says.

Part of the Sparks Sidewalk Sunday program includes a follow-up by church members during the week. Church volunteers are assigned as leaders, or captains, at each of the apartment buildings, and they visit the children’s homes, taking food or sweets with them.

They also take reminders that Sparky the clown will return at the same time in the same place.

“The day before Sidewalk Sunday, that’s all they talk about,” says Dawn Lombard, a mother of five children living at the El Fortin on Magnolia Avenue in Anaheim. “They can’t wait to see Sparky.”

Like Lombard, several parents at El Fortin express their approval of bringing some brightness to their otherwise dark neighborhoods.

“Now, when [the children] go outside and play,” Olga Diaz says in Spanish, “instead of seeing people fighting and using foul language, they learn about God.” Diaz has four children.

“This has been important for the family,” says Eva Montes. The mother of three--all under age 8--says her children didn’t know much about Christian gospel until Sparks Sidewalk Sunday appeared in January. “Now they ask me questions, and we pray together,” she says.

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Each week, the ministry holds six programs simultaneously at separate sites: Wilshire Apartments, Minnie Apartments and on Ross Street near Willard Junior High in Santa Ana, and at El Fortin Apartments, Fashion Gardens Apartments and the El Dorado Inn apartments in Anaheim.

So popular has the program become that both apartment managers and police agencies have given a helping hand.

Stationed a few blocks away from the Minnie Street and Wilshire apartments, Santa Ana Police Cpl. Steven Alegre says the church’s group has made a positive impact.

“It has made a difference in a sense of security for the residents,” Alegre says, adding that the combined presence of other community groups and the police has begun to put crime in check in the neighborhood.

At all of the buildings, managers have donated one apartment for the church group to store food, games and electronic equipment.

“We asked the pastor [Armida Rodriguez] if we could have something here,” says Leticia Carmona, manager at the Fashion Garden Apartments. “There are a lot of gangs in the area where we live, and [Sparks] has been a way to have something positive come out of the negative.”

Fred Warfield, assistant director of the Sparks program, runs a kids’ club at the 164-unit Wilshire Apartments for the estimated 200 children in the neighborhood. The club, operated out of a donated apartment, is the site of Bible-study classes for parents and a place for children to do arts and crafts or listen to a story. In one room, there are two computers for the children’s use.

One day, Hope Ruiz, a Lake Forest resident who drives up to Santa Ana to volunteer for the church, read the children the story of Jonah and the fish. Afterward, they drew a whale swallowing a stick-figure man. On another occasion Ruiz read “The Fall of Man,” with the children depicting Adam and Eve eating from an apple tree--the tree of knowledge.

Warfield, 25, who works for a Santa Ana computer distributor, says Sparks has been a fountain of knowledge for him. “Six years ago, I was trapped in drugs, and I had no direction. Now, I know this is what the Lord wants for me.”

Like Warfield, many of the church leaders come from difficult pasts--ones in which they have struggled with despair, broken self-esteem and alcohol or drug abuse.

“If this didn’t touch us, I would have been another welfare mother and my husband another drug addict,” says Sheila Calderon, who has been clean of drugs for eight years, and who, with husband Mario, now leads the Sparks program at El Fortin.

“That’s what you call a testimony,” Calderon says.

Every other Thursday, the captains from each site and active volunteers meet to discuss strategies for the coming weeks. Rodriguez moderates, giving direction and encouraging captains to offer anecdotes about their successes.

At a meeting at the home of Lawrence and Cruz Martinez, captains at El Dorado Inn, Rodriguez offers advice to the group. “Think like a kid,” Rodriguez says, “because you remember what you needed as a kid. That’s what you want to give to the children.”

Problems that have come up are discussed.

“Two tough teens were throwing rocks at us during a Sparks until Cruz [Martinez] set them straight,” Julie Ortega says. “Then they showed up to Bible study and gave her a hug. This is what Christianity is all about.”

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Rodriguez says she understands the distant looks of children who show up to Sparks unbathed and with matted hair. She relates to the feelings of emptiness that for at least one hour a week can be filled with communal joy.

Rodriguez speaks from personal experience: She grew up in a troubled home in the Mexican-immigrant barrios of Pomona.

“Through those difficult years, there were teachers and religious authorities who helped me and my family,” she says. Their support gave her the strength to continue, she says.

She recalls a turning point during a crisis in her life.

“Alone, uncertain and suicidal, I attended a prayer meeting. . . . I was presented with the difference between religion and a relationship with Jesus Christ,” she says. “That experience changed my life and gave me a purpose to live.”

Rodriguez speaks of her intense desire to give hope to abused and neglected children. She says a visit in 1994 to run-down neighborhoods in Brooklyn inspired her to launch Sparks Sidewalk Sunday.

On that December day, Rodriguez had been invited to participate in an outreach program by New York Metro Ministries, also part of the Foursquare Gospel Church.

Church members were picking up hundreds of children to take them to a nearby parking lot, where a service was to take place.

As the children lined up to get on buses, Rodriguez sought an assignment.

“I asked, ‘What do I do?’ My captain replied, ‘Just love them.’ ”

Puzzled, Rodriguez followed her host’s lead. The next thing that happened was magical, she says.

“Kids were standing in line for a hug. And that was the key. That’s what they wanted: love, somebody that would care for them. . . . And then I understood.”

Rodriguez brought the revelation back to the troubled neighborhoods of Orange County and about a year later started Sparks Sidewalk Sunday.

The message of the service at each Sidewalk Sunday is set by the individual captains.

At a recent service at the Wilshire Apartments, under the blue and white tent, a handmade puppet asks program leader Pat Mejia, “Where is my place in the world?”

Passing out paper cutouts of different colored bears to each of the 60 or so children, Mejia explains:

“It doesn’t matter if you are purple or orange, big or small. God has a plan for you because you are special.”

It is the basic kind of message that is the foundation of Sparks Sidewalk Sunday.

“The general rule is to keep it simple,” Rodriguez says. “Like, thou shalt not murder, or steal. The important thing is to give the children some foundations. The children will tell their parents.”